Officials in multiple countries are now investigating Paolo Macchiarini.

Reaction to Vanity Fair’s recent story about the mysterious life and work of experimental transplant surgeon Paolo Macchiarini has been swift. Medical administrators, politicians, journalists, and criminal investigators in the United States, Sweden, and Italy are now seeking to determine how a man with questionable credentials and qualifications—as Vanity Fair revealed—could have been allowed to perform invasive surgeries on patients in Europe and the U.S., and whether crimes were committed in the course of those operations.

On Thursday, Karolinska Institute (K.I.), Macchiarini’s employer in Sweden—and home of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, announced that it would not renew Macchiarini’s contract and instead ordered that his research group be dismantled. The institute had previously stated

An article in the magazine Vanity Fair on January 5 claims that a researcher and former visiting professor at [KI] provided false information in his resume. For this reason, Karolinska Institutet has started an investigation to verify the accuracy of the information the researcher submitted to KI prior to his employment in 2010.

Karolinska Institute spokesman Claes Keisu tells Vanity Fair that investigators did, in fact, confirm that Macchiarini “has given false information about some of his previous employments and academic titles at foreign institutions.” He further noted that Macchiarini’s experimental surgeries—highlighted in a three-part documentary by Swedish broadcaster SVT, which followed on the heels of the Vanity Fair story—“have discredited KI and damaged KI’s reputation and the public’s and the scientific community’s trust in our university.”

Meanwhile, in Peoria, Illinois, where Macchiarini performed a trachea transplant on a two-year-old Canadian-Korean girl (who died a short time later), Dr. Tim Miller, vice president, medical staff services at Children’s Hospital, informed Vanity Fair: “Like the Karolinska Institute, we are undertaking an extensive review of the credentialing actions regarding Dr. Paolo Macchiarini.”

Overseas, the Italian press has been rife with recriminations and schadenfreude. Alessio Gaggioli, a reporter with Corriere Fiorentino who has written extensively about Macchiarini, said, “Where are all the politicians and doctors I questioned for years about Macchiarini? They are silent....This was absolutely foreseeable.”

Finally, Science magazine reported: “KI’s investigation into Macchiarini’s CV was triggered by a story in Vanity Fair last month. That article focused on Macchiarini’s past relationship with Benita Alexander, an NBC News producer; among other things, Alexander says Macchiarini convinced her that he had operated on several heads of state and that he would marry her in a ceremony officiated by Pope Francis, in the presence of Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin. The story also claimed Macchiarini had embellished his CV.”

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